Fans loud, A's bats quiet in Opening Day loss

OAKLAND -- After a year of playing in front of empty ballparks, the A’s were eager for the return of fans at the Oakland Coliseum, where they’ve so often utilized the crowd’s energy to produce a number of late-inning magical moments on offense.

The electricity was in the building on Thursday for Opening Day, as a capacity-limited sellout crowd of 10,436 fans showered the Astros with boos and roared for the return of the home A's during pregame introductions. But once the game began, a loud crowd was not enough for Oakland's offense to overcome a dazzling performance from a familiar foe.

An A’s offense that led the Cactus League in runs scored this spring went silent against Astros ace Zack Greinke in an 8-1 loss. Oakland went scoreless with only three hits through six innings against the right-hander.

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Greinke has long tormented the A’s since arriving to the Major Leagues in 2004. Entering Thursday, he was 9-3 with a 2.92 ERA in 21 games (17 starts) against Oakland. That success continued in the season opener, with his four-pitch mix making him unpredictable for most of the night.

“He just kept us off-balance with the slider and mixed in that curveball, being able to put his heater on both sides of the plate,” A’s right fielder Chad Pinder said. “He’s Zack Greinke for a reason, and he pitched a great game.”

Still, the A’s hit the ball well at times off Greinke. According to Statcast, eight balls hit off the veteran registered with an exit velocity of at least 96.6 mph. The problem was that Greinke often found the right moment to freeze hitters with an unsuspecting pitch, such as an 88 mph fastball to strike out Matt Olson and finish an 11-pitch battle to end the first. That fastball came immediately after a changeup, which also registered at 88 mph.

“He knows what’s working for him on a particular night," A's manager Bob Melvin said. "Threw a number of changeups, maybe not as many as we usually see. Sometimes it’s tough to differentiate between his heater and changeup, because it’s so close in velo. He threw sliders to righties and enough slow curveballs in some pitch-count battles and had really good command.”

Drawing his first Opening Day assignment, Oakland starter Chris Bassitt did his best to match Greinke early. The right-handers traded zeroes through the first three innings, with Bassitt facing the minimum during that time.

Escaping a jam to limit the damage to one run in the fourth, Bassitt's outing ended in the sixth after he gave up a one-out double to Alex Bregman and then walked Kyle Tucker. Righty Yusmeiro Petit took over and gave up a two-run double to Yordan Alvarez, so Bassitt finished with three runs allowed on four hits and two walks in 5 1/3 innings.

“I thought he threw good,” Melvin said. “When the score is 1-0 coming out of the game, you’ve done your job. Maybe tiring a little bit in the sixth, but to that point, he kept us in the game and gave us a chance to win.”

That hole got deeper, as relievers Adam Kolarek and Reymin Guduan combined to allow five runs over the final two innings.

Oakland’s lone run came in the seventh on a Matt Chapman sacrifice fly that scored Ramón Laureano, who led off the inning with a double and later stole third. Aside from that, a crowd that hadn’t been at the Coliseum since October 2019 was provided with only a few moments when it could truly come to life.

Two of those moments came on a pair of defensive plays by Pinder, who made a leaping catch in right field before crashing into the wall in the fourth and a diving catch to rob Jose Altuve of extra bases to end the fifth.

“He’s a terrific player all the way around,” Melvin said of Pinder. “For a guy that’s played the infield most of his career in the Minor Leagues and in the big leagues early on, he just has great instincts in the outfield. It’s hard to play as many positions as he does and do it as well as he does.”

The first two weeks of the regular season will be a chance for the A’s to make a statement and prove that their dethroning of the Astros in 2020 -- when Oakland won its first American League West title since '13 -- was no fluke. Thursday’s game marked the first of seven that the A's will play against the Astros in a span of 10 days.

One game into that stretch, the A’s were reminded that as they try to repeat as division champions, the Astros are not going to make that an easy feat to achieve.

“They’ve been our main competition the past three or four years,” Olson said. “We know what happened in the playoffs. It’s always a good battle when we play. I think we know the importance of each game against each other, on both sides.”